Should Cameras Be Allowed to Replace Mirrors? - Gov't Wants Your Feedback

[NeilBlanchard]

I had video mirrors for about 5 years. The cameras are inexpensive - the main thing to look for is a viewing angle 90-120deg. Most cameras you find out there are 140-170deg - that makes the scaling tough, and barrel distortion is worse the wider the angle is.

The monitors are a higher cost item. And they need to be hooded if they are in direct sunshine.

They are definitely worth the cost. If you can delete the optical mirrors, then both the frontal area and the Cd improve.

[Snax]

I managed to find some cameras with the narrow angle and intended for side mounting. Should receive them tomorrow as well as some cheap monitors to try out. The cameras are likely keepers, but really not sure on the monitors until after I see how well they work and what mounting options might work best.

I am doing my best to keep things looking as polished and not tacked-on looking as possible once installed, but I think I have worked out a hack for a rectangular center rear dashcam unit to operate as a split screen for the side mirrors if the others don't work out.

Will update with success or failure . .

[Snax]

I spent several hours yesterday getting things installed, and while I am happy with the design and my execution, I was expecting better performance from the parts that I bought - BUT not much better. I went with the cheap option on the monitors, and the cameras themselves are not high end.

Anyway, here's pics -

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vwDF8iXjKqvnc14i7
https://photos.app.goo.gl/3UBCAGH4zr7dLryz9
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2DTw4PwxKgeeKqnR7

A couple of things that I think are worth noting here are:

1. Current mounting includes some of the bodywork in the image. I would prefer not to have that, so I may end up having to shim the cameras to eliminate most of it, because as you can see, there is a fair amount of reflection to deal with. Not a big deal in the day time, but at night, extra sets of headlights become visible. (But I might just cover that portion of the display as a shortcut for now.)
2. Supplemental side lighting is needed to see obstacles in darker areas at night. I was unable to distinguish a curb line at night for parking, which was one of the main reasons I installed these.

[Snax]

Additional limitations noted:

1) The monitors I have chosen do not adjust well to changing light conditions even with manual settings. What is too bright at night is inevitably too dim in the daytime. The most practical middle ground seems somewhere in between which ends up being mediocre, bringing me to the next issue:

2) The cameras pick up a fair portion of the skyline during daylight driving, and while quick to adjust exposure setting, they tend to overcompensate for a bright sky - most notably on partly cloudy days with clouds providing full white reflectivity. So the actual road surface in any even slightly shadowed area just gets washed out in darkness.

3) The field of view of the side cameras is still excessive at 86 degrees, diminishing the size of distant objects more than I would prefer and overlapping a portion of what I can see with my own peripheral vision.

That said, there are better monitors and much better cameras out there. The difficult part is finding packaging that works without looking ridiculously out of place on either the exterior of the car or inside. It is still an improvement over the blindspot mirrors, which I have kept, but definitely looking for better and will be attempting to implement a 1080p MIPI/CSI-2 camera and monitor solution here soon using a hacked rear over-the-mirror unit to split screen two cameras.